THE IMPACT OF THE DRUG WAR ON WOMEN AND FAMILIES

NEW YORK -- The ACLU, Break the Chains: Communities of Color and the War on
Drugs, and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law today
released a report that compiles for the first time existing research on the
effects of current drug laws and sentencing policies on women and their
families. The report, Caught in the Net: the Impact of Drug Policies on
Women & Families (
http://fairlaws4families.com/final-caught-in-the-net-report.pdf ) is
co-authored by the three organizations and is being launched at a national
conference of experts on issues relating to women, families and drugs at
NYU School of Law on March 17th and 18th.

"We've gone from being a nation of latchkey kids to a nation of locked-up
moms, where women are the invisible prisoners of drug laws, serving hard
time for someone else's crime," said Lenora Lapidus, Director of the ACLU
Women's Rights Project. "Family values ought to mean keeping families
together. Treatment can cure drug addiction, but there's no cure for a
family destroyed."

In the wake of Martha Stewart's release from federal prison last week and
the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark rulings on sentencing policies in
U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. FanFan, the Caught in the Net report
highlights the sky-rocketing incarceration rates of women in the United
States. The number of women serving time in state prison facilities for
drug-related offenses has increased 888 percent since 1986 according to the
Sentencing Project, and U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics show that more
than one million women are currently in prison, in jail, or on parole or
probation.

In a letter posted on her website prior to her release from Alderson
Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, Stewart encourages the American
people "to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of
incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved
in drug-taking."

"Women and their children have for too long remained the unseen victims of
the drug war. The Caught in the Net report and conference are meant to
bring women's experiences into the ongoing debate that lawmakers are having
about sentencing reform," said Deborah Small, Executive Director of Break
the Chains.

The report and conference feature representative stories of women
minimally, peripherally or unknowingly caught up in drug activity who are
found "guilty by association" with their husbands and boyfriends involved
in the drug trade. Examples in the report illustrate the ways in which
expanded liability laws like conspiracy, accomplice liability, constructive
possession and asset forfeiture laws unfairly punish women for the actions
of others. With little or no information to trade prosecutors, these women
serve the longest sentences for the least involvement in drug offenses.

"This country can no longer ignore the devastation of families and
communities when record numbers of women and mothers are locked up for drug
offenses," said Kirsten Levingston, Director of the Criminal Justice
Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "It's time to promote drug
policies that work, to stop wasting money and to use our social systems to
help women, not hurt them."